Download e-book for iPad: A Long, Long Time Ago and Essentially True by Brigid Pasulka

By Brigid Pasulka

ISBN-10: 0547428472

ISBN-13: 9780547428475

at the eve of global battle II, in a spot known as Half-Village, a tender guy nicknamed the Pigeon falls in love with a woman fabled for her angelic seems to be. To courtroom Anielica Hetmanská he deals up his "golden hands" to rework her family's modest hut right into a attractive domestic, thereby construction his means into her heart.

Then struggle arrives to chop brief their courtship, hold up their marriage, and wreak havoc in all their lives, even sending the younger enthusiasts faraway from domestic to the promise of a brand new existence in Kraków.

approximately fifty years later, their granddaughter, Beata, repeats their postwar trip, looking a brand new existence within the fairy-tale urban of her grandmother's tales. but if she arrives in Kraków, rather than the whispered prosperity of the hot Poland, she discovers a urban stuck among its destiny and its previous, and entire of annoyed youths. Taken in via her toughtalking cousin Irena and Irena's glamorous daughter Magda, Beata struggles to discover her personal position in Nineteen Nineties Kraków and within the constellation of Irena and Magda's fierce love. yet unforeseen events— tragedies and miracles— can switch lives and open eyes. And Beata may discover a new means of seeing her family's and her country's history— in addition to a imaginative and prescient for her personal function within the New Poland.

Whimsical, clever, appealing, magical, and occasionally even heartbreaking, an extended, very long time in the past and primarily actual weaves jointly impressive tales, reimagining part a century of Polish background in the course of the legacy of 1 unforgettable love affair.

Celebrated novelist John Lanchester (“an stylish and fantastically witty writer”—New York occasions) returns with an epic novel that captures the obsessions of our time. It’s 2008 and issues are falling aside: undergo Stearns and Lehman Brothers are going less than, and the citizens of Pepys highway, London—a banker and his shopaholic spouse, an previous lady death of a mind tumor and her graffiti-artist grandson, Pakistani store vendors and a shadowy refugee who works because the meter maid, the younger football big name from Senegal and his minder—are receiving nameless postcards interpreting “We wish What you will have.

Whilst Barry Fairbrother dies by surprise in his early forties, the little city of Pagford is left in surprise. Pagford is, probably, an English idyll, with a cobbled industry sq. and an old abbey, yet what lies at the back of the gorgeous façade is a city at struggle. wealthy at struggle with terrible, children at conflict with their mom and dad, other halves at conflict with their husbands, academics at battle with their pupils….

Norbert welcomed me into an office that would have satisfied the stuffiest of London solicitors, all dark wood and leather. It was his office, for this man, despite being scarcely ten years older than I, was now the senior partner in the august firm that had served my father in life and after. The elder Norbert and his contemporary partner had both succumbed in the influenza epidemic of 1919, leaving the son of one and a twenty-year-old grandson of the other in charge. Norbert had done his best to fill the impressive surroundings, but I thought that even now he was slightly intimidated, and would have been more comfortable among lighter, more modern furnishings.

A week in California, tying up business, and then we can turn for home. ” I don't get seasick on trains. ” “To draw up the papers for selling the house and business? ” This noncommittal, pseudo-Socratic dialogue was beginning to annoy. ” I snapped. I should never have told him about them, although it would have been difficult not to, considering the closeness of the quarters. ” “Oh for heaven's sake, Holmes, you sound like Freud. The man had sex on the brain. ‘Rooms in dreams are generally women,' he declares.

He had his pipe between his teeth, and was concentrating on rolling up the pouch, so I shut my eyes again. “Terra firma,” I said. “A week in California, tying up business, and then we can turn for home. ” I don't get seasick on trains. ” “To draw up the papers for selling the house and business? ” This noncommittal, pseudo-Socratic dialogue was beginning to annoy. ” I snapped. I should never have told him about them, although it would have been difficult not to, considering the closeness of the quarters.